Kalamazoo Gazette file photoA morel mushroom found in northern Kalamazoo County in a previous season, along a county road under a dead elm tree.
Mark Bugnaski / Kalamazoo Gazette

ALLEGAN -- There it is in living color, on a website devoted to sightings of morel mushrooms, a photo of a small morel lying atop a copy of Thursday's Kalamazoo Gazette, its general location noted as "Allegan."

If mushroom hunters go by the calendar alone, they may well miss their annual chance to find these unpredictable delicacies.

It's only the first day of spring, and May is a more typical month for Michigan mushroom hunting. But mushrooms, like plants, seem to respond to soil moisture and heat, said Nate Fuller, conservation and stewardship director at Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy.

"All the other plants that are usually up when morels are here are up," Fuller said. "The one that triggers my attention is wild leeks, because they often go on the plate with the morels." Fuller said this weekend he saw leeks that were 3-4 inches tall, about half their full-grown size.

Pete Stobie, educational director at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, said a nice warm rain combined with high temperatures could easily prompt morels to come up. Picking morels at the Nature Center is forbidden, just as picking wildflowers is.

If this current warm spell is interrupted by a snow or more typical early spring weather, he said, it's also possible the mushrooms will come back for a second round in April or May, he said.

It's possible, too, that they won't -- fungi are unpredictable that way.

"They're not a plant, they're fungus," Stobie said.

Fuller said spring wildflowers, though, are are more predictable, and more likely to be killed off for the year if there is a freeze later this month or next.

Spring beauties and bloodroot are blooming now, Fuller said, and Dutchmen's Breeches have leaves out. "The spring wildflower show is going to be very early this year," Fuller said.

If the daily highs stay even in the 60's, Fuller said, "those flowers will be blooming April 1 — a month early, a full month early."

The implications of such a shift reach far beyond a nature enthusiast's missed chance to view blossoms, Fuller said.

"I worry about migratory bird species that come back and are not expecting things to be this far along," he said. "Many birds are looking for specific conditions."

Hummingbirds and sapsuckers, for instance, usually come back to Michigan when when sap is running and full of sugar, a period that may be shortened with these hot daily highs.

Or, if a later frost kills off insects such as the tiny caterpillars many warblers feed on in the spring, a major food source will be eliminated.

Some species adapt, Fuller said, but for others it is not so easy. "They have gotten used to way things are, and if some (food sources) are long gone by time they arrive, they may have to spend extra energy and resources finding alternatives."

Or flying south again, at least a little way, if cold weather makes a return.

"Robins are notorious for showing up, then retreating if it turns cold again," he said.

Other birds get desperate. Fuller said he remembers one year when bird species that usually snatch insects from the tree tops were instead clustered on the ground, turning over leaves, scouring the forest floor for insects.

There have been credible reports of both a scarlet tanager and a crested flycatcher, birds that usually eat large flying insects, in desperation killing and eating hummingbirds, Fuller said.

"These insect-eating birds were trying to stay alive," he said.

Fuller said that these phenomenon may become more common as shifts in weather patterns occur.

Phenology, the study of when things happen -- first bird sitings, ice thaws, etc. -- has noted many new records in recent years, Fuller said. "We are seeing the unusual becoming the norm," he said. "The fact that I had my little boy playing in a wading pool on St. Patrick's Day in Michigan is bizarre."

Still, Stobie reminded, "this is weather, not climate. "As the old saying goes: Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get."